When Your Bills are Late and the Bank's Web Site is Down

Nothing is more frustrating than when somebody breaks the internet. Whether it's your personal connection faltering or a bandwidth issue on the server's end, it always seems that the very moment you need to get to YouTube to see the skateboarding dog is when you won't be able to. But two very literally-named Web sites are trying to help you in those moments of desperation, Down for Everyone or Just me and Notify Me When It's Up.

Clearly there are more dire situations where you'd need to know about a page than the skateboarding dog example. Take, for instance, a bank's Web site when your bills are past due or a chat room before a virtual meeting with co-workers.

Down for Everyone or Just Me lets you type in the address of the site that's MIA, and find out if it's down for everyone or just you. This wouldn't work perfectly in a multi-server situation—like if some Google Mail servers were up but not others, btu it's still, a quick and easy way to see whether your problem is widespread before you go running to the nearest WiFi hot spot to finish your bill pay.

If you find out that your site is down for everyone (and not just you), then you can truck on over to Notify Me When It's Up and enter in the site you're trying to get on to and your email address or phone number and NMWIU will monitor the site and shoot you an email or text when it returns to the internet. An awesome little tip for when a hot link you wanted to click through on Digg exceeds it's bandwidth.